Victor Davis Hanson beats a drum often heard here at twc:
“Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.”
Remember third world county‘s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
And remember also that “literacy” is not just being able to decode the written word, either facilely or laboriously. It’s being able to do that AND having a goodly store of useful knowledge gained thereby. Anything less and one is simply either a useful idiot fit for deploying in the service of evil or a completely useless idiot, good for nothing in particular.
Sadly, somewhere near 75-80% of Americans seem to be one or the other of those two idiot alternatives.
They don’t have to be taught anything of substance or anything that will stick. They can be taught answers to the test in a vacuum. That’s all that matters now. Regurgitation, not comprehension or retention past test day.
One of my fav pubschool teachers was my 8th grade American history teacher. Tests were interesting. Every Friday, we had quizzes with around 200 “questions”. The “questions” were just lists of words, phrases, people, events, places. Our task was to circle the two (or three, depending on stated criteria) that were most closely related.
Given the class structure–readings and lecture with discussion, not just Q&A–this really got my lil grey cells involved.